Ed Mead’s autobiography, Lumpen, tells a story of a revolutionary life. Mead writes openly and unflinchingly about his days as a social prisoner, his time in the underground George Jackson Brigade, and his work as a prison organizer and founder of Men Against Sexism. The title, Lumpen, refers to Marx’s term lumpenproletariat – a social underclass of gangsters, swindlers, and petty criminals who, Marx argued, had no revolutionary potential; Mead sets out to prove Marx wrong about the lumpenproletariat’s contributions to social justice and revolution.